Fucking Collective Shout, I saw it happen on Steam, and figured it would hit here too! That is fucking stupid.
Viewing post in Itch has shadowbanned NSFW games comments
I hope this and steam are enough to finally get a counter rage thing going on socials, but who knows. To some degree I question how much this was even Collective Shout, and how much it was just Visa wanting to do this anyway and having an excuse. You dumped a major commercial partner over 1000 angry wackos calling you? Really? I'm sure they're about to get a lot more that 1000 calls. But we'll see if it does anything.
Hard to say. They are run by NCOSE (National Center on Sexual Exploitation), who is also going after Bad Dragon, as well as many other sex shops. They were also against same sex marriage, and tried to sue libraries that were not in the jurisdiction of any of their members to remove books. Ever heard about the book bans in Texas, yup, same folks. They got Visa and Mastercard to drop Pornhub back in 2020, and went after XVideos the same way. its their standard operating procedure.
My point is those 1000 calls all have to reach the board directly to have a effect. To actually pressure them through call center you'll have to be able to overwhelm their capacity over an extended period of time. That's gonna take, 10,000 calls per day for two weeks?
If 1000 people send the CEO a message on LinkedIn there could be some effect.
Meanwhile, would you consider using some Japanese platform, such as DLsite? I think they are going to at least try to hold, for how much bigger and mainstream their industry is. But I don't know how practical it can be. They were not famous for being user-friendly to foreigners but there seem to be some improvements. If there is a sizable enough wave of immigration it may even entice them to be more open.
They do have an EN section, but a. They've been hit with a censorship wave already (though not quite as bad), and my understanding is it's much worse for the EN section. b. Yeah, not sure if I can even set up there as a foreigner, or how the payout system would work. c. I actually looked up the details on DLsite a while back and their rates are robbery. They take like 30%, even if you're native (for contrast, itch was about 7%, and that's all payment processor fees). Pixiv has their own similar crowdfunding/monthly payment thing, but that's ALSO censored now (although again, not as much as stuff in the US.) But believe me, I've considered, just probably not practical. If Japan unfucked their fees and gave visa the finger as they seem intent on doing, they could make a tidy profit being a haven for this stuff, but it's doubtful that will happen.